And the main reason for this is that, with the excitement of it all, real planning takes second place!

Too many simply jump in with what they think is a “good idea”, grab a domain name and see how it goes!

Please… instead of rushing in blindly… do some planning!

If you want to set anything up online, here are five things you really should look at VERY closely before you actually “do” anything with your own web site.

1. Identify a niche that has a good chance of working. A niche:
   

   » which suits your interests and
   » where there is a “starving” crowd
   » who want immediate answers to a pressing problem

   This will involve (among other things):
   » looking to your interests for inspiration
   » niche keyword research
   » finding products already in the niche
   » determining the extent of the competition already in that niche

2. Work out how you can monetize that niche, whether that be by selling any, or a mix of (and in no particular order):
   

   » advertising (including Google’s Adsense program)
   » your own physical stock/goods which need shipping
   » drop-shipped stock - selling other people’s physical products where they do the shipping/fulfillment
   » affiliate marketing - selling other people’s physical or info products/services for an affiliate commission
   » your own information product or service, whether that be one single item or a continuity program

   Focus your visitor actions so they do what you want them to do - i.e. click an ad, sign up for your newsletter, read a review.

   Try to concentrate on one or two main money making methods per niche… too many may simply confuse your audience and result in them leaving!

3. Identify possible products you can sell/refer people to, whether that be from your site or through your back end. But BE SELECTIVE!
   
   

   For example, many newbie affiliate marketers sign up for any and every program they see, and unfortunately NEVER end up doing anything with them.

   Or if you are doing an e-commerce site, don’t try to do one with a database of hundreds of products which needs constant maintenance to keep up to date!

   Instead, concentrate on a manageable number of programs and/or products! Pick what you think will be the top sellers (based on your research in #1) and go with some of those!

   Once you’ve got an idea of what works, then start to play around by testing other products.

4. Decide what type of web site you need to set up - for example (and not a complete list):
   

   » a review site
   » an e-commerce/catalog site
   » a blog
   » a content site
   » a membership site
   » a “brochure” site
   » a mini-net (collection of sites)

   Decisions here will help determine the type of hosting and any special software you will need.

5. Identify the back-end processes you can put in place to develop ongoing customer relations because this is where the real money is- i.e.
   

   » setting up support mechanisms
   » collecting email addresses
   » integrating one (or most likely more) auto-responder sequences
   » deciding on frequency and type of broadcast emails needed
   » deciding on relevant products to offer with an up-sell, down-sell, one-time-offer, or through ongoing email marketing
   

I’ll throw in a totally free, but equally important, “bonus” suggestion here too…

6. Make sure you have systems in place to record ALL of the important information related to each aspect of your business! Such things as usernames, passwords, login URLs, bank account details etc need to be accurately recorded.

Phew! That’s a lot a stuff to do!

And I haven’t even scratched the surface yet with the things you need to do AFTER you do get your web site up and running (I’ll leave that for another later post).

The point is…

You are supposed to be building a business!

If all you want to do is “play” on the ‘net… then by all means jump in and try out hundreds of different things without doing what’s really necessary…

But if you want to replace your day job and build something that can become an asset, then you owe it to yourself to do your due diligence in the first place!

And that means you must properly plan for every new niche you want to move into. Every new web site you set up as part of your growing online “empire” deserves the best possible chance to succeed!

As they say in the classics…

“If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail”

The first example of this you would have already met online is your ISP (Internet Service Provider) who charges you every month so you can access the internet. And if you’re also in business online, you’ll need a web host, most of whom also charge by the month, and domain name (renewed yearly).

In both cases, these are something you just can’t do without if you want to be online!

So the concept of continuity programs is quite simple.

• Find a product someone just can’t live without,
  
• Sell it to them once,
  
• And then keep taking their money at regular intervals.

But once the customer has made the decision to purchase, they will usually be quite happy to continue making additional “payments”, as long as the product continues to live up to (or exceed) their expectations!

In most businesses, much of the effort goes into attracting potential customers, and then converting them into paying customers!

If your business relies on “one-off” sales, you expend effort to attract a customer for the first sale… and THEN have to put in even MORE effort to attract new customers to REPLACE them the following month.

Let’s say you are selling a $15 ebook and are lucky enough to attract 50 paying customers every month…

Every month, you’ll make $750 ($15×50) worth of gross sales.

And that’s worth a grand total of $9000 in a year ($750×12).

But if you use a continuity model you’ll see the SAME effort is rewarded many times over, when each customer automatically “buys” again at the start of every month.

Now, one single buying decision results in multiple transactions.

Let’s use the same figures again… Again 50 sales a month at $15 a sale, only this time it’s recurring income, every month.

Mth 1: 50 new sales = $750 = TOTAL income this month = $750
Mth 2: 50 new sales = $750 + $750 from renewals = $1500
Mth 3: 50 new sales = $750 + $1500 from renewals = $2250
Mth 4: 50 new sales = $750 + $2250 from renewals = $3000
Mth 5: 50 new sales = $750 + $3000 from renewals = $3750
Mth 6: 50 new sales = $750 + $3750 from renewals = $4500
Mth 7: 50 new sales = $750 + $4500 from renewals = $5250
Mth 8: 50 new sales = $750 + $5250 from renewals = $6000
Mth 9: 50 new sales = $750 + $6000 from renewals = $6750
Mth 10: 50 new sales = $750 + $6750 from renewals = $7500
Mth 11: 50 new sales = $750 + $7500 from renewals = $8250
Mth 12: 50 new sales = $750 + $8250 from renewals = $9000

Now you have a yearly income of $58,500 from the continuity model, from the same number of “customers” over the year!

Granted, some people will leave and need to be replaced. You might also not be lucky enough to round up 50 new victims - sorry, customers - every month…

But you should get the picture! Even with only 25 sales every month… the figures still look half decent! I know I’d love to be pulling in $4500 a month after 12 months from just one site!

The “problem” with continuity or membership programs?

First up, deciding WHAT to offer which is WORTH the recurring fee you want to charge, and then finding people who are prepared to pay it.

I’ve agonized over this quite often for several web sites that I operate, discovering that often there isn’t a useful membership model I can implement on those sites, now matter how hard I think it through.

So if you have difficulty coming up with substance for your model in the first place, think of what then happens in month 2… and month 3… etc.

And this is where most programs come “unstuck”…

By not CONTINUING to provide the same (or better) service every month… month after month after month.

In the info-products field, that means coming up with new, high quality and useful content every month!

In the service field, it means supplying the service (eg web hosting) without interruption or downtime, and possibly enhancing the service to encourage existing customers to stay longer and even more new ones to come on board.

Finally, don’t assume that because your customer is now a “member” that they will remain loyal to your service. I think of the thousands of people that “churn” from one ISP to another every month, thinking they’ll get a better deal or better service with a new one. Or transfer on a whim following a recommendation from a friend.

You have to work on that loyalty!

Essentially that means providing your members with responsive customer support, and also communicating regularly with them - to remind them that you still exist; to tell them how to best use your service; to inform them of improvements; to get feedback on areas for improvement - so they get to know you as a “friend” and trust your recommendations.

So when you are planning on how best to monetize your online presence, consider the “effort” involved in chasing “new” customers all the time for “one-off” sales to only earn an income around only one sixth of what you could earn with a simple continuity program (as in the example above)…

Consider carefully, and those “problems” should be very easy to overcome.

We’re about to go and check out the variety of comment and trackback spam you will be subjected to with your blog. Much of it is totally useless, and a lot of it most people will find offensive.

So be warned… it may not be for the faint hearted

And all I can say is thank God for Akismet - it’s a great WordPress plugin which prevents these losers from taking over your site!

Duration: 5 min 19 secs - File size: 9.5 MB (opens in new window)

Video Summary:

• This video explains WHY you need some sort of spam protection for your WordPress Installation
  
• The WordPress plugin Akismet comes standard with WordPress 2.5 + and is definitely worth installing.
  
• A WordPress.com API key is needed to activate this plugin.
  
• The range of examples shown demonstrate how prolific the problem of comment and trackback spam is.
  
• It’s worth checking your spam queue at least once a week to determine if Akismet accidentally trapped any genuine comments.
  
• However authentic they might look, most trackback spam is NOT worth acknowledging with a return link from your site.
  
• Check each originating site if in doubt, and decide whether YOU would really want to link back to it.

The two videos on this page outline some of the changes I had to make to this theme to get it to “do” what I wanted.

While they do cover some advanced WordPress concepts, I do strongly encourage you to endeavour to learn how to actually make these sorts of changes with the themes that you use. Set up a WordPress “playground” on a sub-domain which the public won’t see, and “play” with the code so you can see what happens!

You won’t become an expert overnight, but you will (eventually) pick up enough knowledge to become dangerous… and that will help you make minor modifications to your theme and make help it stand out from all the other people out there who might be using the same theme that you are. As long as you maintain a backup copy of all the files that “work” you can’t do too much major damage

The first video investigates the right and wrong ways to make changes to your WordPress Themes.

Duration: 7 min 6 secs - File size: 9.5 MB (opens in new window)

Duration: 9 min 55 secs - File size: 13.5 MB (opens in new window)

There are literally thousands of free and paid WordPress themes you can choose from, and more importantly learn from so that you can eventually make minor modifications to your free (or paid) theme, or even develop your own once you gain the skills needed.

Duration: 9 min 14 secs - File size: 10.0 MB (opens in new window)

Video Summary:

• This video explains the concept of themes and how changing themes can give your web site a totally different look (easily).
  
• Check Brian Gardner.com for a good selection of free and paid themes.
  
• How to upload your (unzipped) theme files using Filezilla to your /wp-content/themes directory, and activate the chosen theme within WordPress (Design tab)
  
• Upload two plugins to the /wp-content/plugins folder (read the readme file with each plugin to find out what to upload)
  
• The custom theme I wanted had “problems” with the layout… so now I have to go “fiddle” with the php files in the theme to work out what’s going wrong… more on that in the next video.

Your send your visitors or customers to a related merchant site. If they buy, you earn a commission, which can range anywhere from 2% for some physical products, to up to 100% for info-products.

But it’s a numbers game!

A very BIG numbers game!

And unless you have LOTS of visitors to refer to your merchants, it is very unlikely that you will make lots of money from affiliate marketing.

For most people, affiliate marketing can at best provide only small amounts of pocket money. There are very few people who make a full-time living solely from the promotion of affiliate products.

The temptation is to sign up with LOTS of affiliate programs… The thinking here is that the more you take part in, the more money you can make.

That’s not necessarily the case, so please resist this temptation to sign up for multiple affiliate programs!

You WILL quickly find yourself spending all your time “managing” things…

Things like broken links, changing/expiring campaigns, keeping up to date with new products etc. And you HAVE to stay on top of it, because nothing looks more unprofessional than links or banners that just don’t work!

You’ll probably even quickly forget that you ever signed up for 80% of the programs unless you DO something about it straight away.

The “secret” to being a successful affiliate marketer lies in the…

Careful selection and testing of just a limited and manageable number of products that are very closely related to your target market and their needs.

You do NOT want to promote hundreds of items that don’t convert as they distract your audience from the few that do work.

You want to find, say a dozen, that work for you most of the time. Preferably one or more of those will have a recurring income component to them - i.e. a membership program which you earn ongoing monthly commissions from.

For example promoting a web hosting service which is very suitable for internet marketing, is just one affiliate model used on the OMF site.

So how do you know which affiliate programs are going to work?

Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer other than testing different products with your market!

And that’s going to take time… Allow at least a couple of weeks to a month and track your statistics. Know how many people have seen your affiliate “ad”. Know how many have clicked through to the merchant offer (use a redirect script which can track those clicks).

If it’s NOT getting results (sales) in that time… then kill it! Use the space for something else that brings more value to you and your market.

Remember…

The more choices your offer your visitors… the more decisions you try to force people to make… the more likely they are to take the easy decision. Specifically, that big red “X” in the top corner of their browser, or the “unsubscribe” link in your promotional emails.

As anyone who’s been to a giveaway site will attest, downloading a whole bunch of zip files and then unzipping them for sorting and filing etc, can be a harrowing experience.

And one of the main reasons why items gather digital dust on your hard drive is because your downloads were NOT organised properly when you grabbed your files.

Now this is NOT meant to be a sales pitch for any special download organiser software - although if you like, it would be an excellent opportunity for you to check out Alex Goodall’s IM Index Mind Map to help get yourself really and properly organised! If your desktop looks anything like the one at the left… then it’s probably time to take a serious close look at it

But for now, I want to offer you a suggestion…

Think back on the number of times you have downloaded a file that might have been called something like 564fadg2.zip or a similar meaningless name?

And when you unzip it, instead of seeing “MyFreeReport.pdf” which you expected, you get 564fadg2.pdf which is also a bit useless! And then you spend half the night renaming most of the files you downloaded so you know what they are actually about!

Wouldn’t it be much nicer if the person who bundled up the file in the first place used some sensible naming conventions… like
100TrafficTactics-PLR.pdf which when zipped became
100TrafficTactics-PLR.zip

Even better, how about them being REALLY clever and BRANDING the name somehow to remind you where you got it from? Like this:
sspry-100TrafficTactics-PLR.pdf :: sspry-100TrafficTactics-PLR.zip
omf-ListBuildingBasics-MRR.mp3 :: omf-ListBuildingBasics-MRR.zip

There are several important elements here YOU should seriously try to implement if you offer downloadable products:

1. the person or site name/abbreviation (to remind customer where they got it from - good for problems and/or more sales)
   
2. The SAME name is given to the zip and pdf/mp3 etc (which “should” ALSO match the title of the product)
   
3. The easily identifiable usage RIGHTS to the product

“On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.”

It seems that web surfers don’t waste much time in deciding on the usefulness of a web page… and the longer the page, the “less” of it that actually gets read!

Remember this with every Internet-based communication you make!

Especially with email marketing.

Jakob’s recommendation? In most cases…
“You’d be wise to put your word count on a strict diet!”

Follow Up Reading:
How Users Read on the Web
Writing for the Web
How Little Do Users Read?

P.S. Look at the mix of ALL elements on your web pages - ads, navigation etc? How many choices are you offering visitors which might distract them from your primary objective?

Are you making things so hard that their simple solution is that big red “X” in the top RH corner?

Blogger - The person who owns the blog.

Blog Hopping - Hopping from one blog to another by clicking on link after link, usually starting with a blogroll. Sound familiar?

Blogging - The process of regularly updating an online journal or newsletter that is readily accessible to the general public where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.

Blogosphere - The whole blogging community.

Blogroll - A list of the blogger’s favorite blogs, with links, in the sidebar of the blog.

Blogsnob - When someone responds only to the comments left on their blog by their friends and not others.

Comment Spam - When robots or spambots give a flood of fake comments on a blog. Have Akismet or some other comment spam trapping software installed to limit this problem.

Linkfest - A post containing several links to other bloggers’ blog posts. The links are chosen by the blog owner.

Link Love - Linking to another’s blog because you like it, not because you were asked to.

No-Follow / Do-Follow - Links within comments are, by default, set up with the “no-follow” tag which tells search engines to NOT follow the links and index them, supposedly to prevent sharing PR (Google Page Rank). Many blogs now have set up “do-follow” links which encourage people to leave comments and gain links to their site.

Permalink - If you wanted to post a link to a single post somewhere, you would use this unique URL. A “pretty” permalink is usually comprised of the keywords in the item title, and when done well, is great for your readers AND search engine optimization.

Ping - When someone else writes about the blogger’s original post, the trackback, or ping, notifies the original blogger. A ping also notifies the major search engines that you have added new content to your blog.

Podcasting - When a blogger posts audio or video on their blog and RSS feed. A good pod-casting plugin will help you syndicate your poscasts through Apples I-Tunes software.

RSS Feed - A web feed that publishes updated content from blogs or news headlines. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Originally RSS feeds could only be read in special “reader” software. Now they can now be read in many modern web browsers and converted by services like Feedburner to be read in email.

Slug - The actual file name given to a blog post e.g. this-is-my-post - which is usually comprised of the keywords in the post title.

Theme - The overall blog look or design of the blog. The look of your blog can be easily changed by changing the theme. There are many free and paid themes to choose from that work with a WordPress blog.

Trackback - By sending a ping alert, a blogger can see who has written about his original blog post and referenced it.

Vlogger - A blogger who’s blog is primarily video in nature. One of the best examples I know of is Wine Library TV: Gary Vaynerchuk’s daily wine video blog

WordPress - Free software that allows you to develop your own blog, either hosted on your own web server, or hosted on WordPress.com

There you have it! An incomplete and entirely “unofficial” blog vocabulary list.

Rest assured that as time goes on, even more blogging words will be invented. The next time you come across a word related to blogging, look here for the meaning, then get back to work making your blog the best blog it can be.

When I did, I got a rude shock! 404 errors - or “Page Not Found” errors popping up everywhere!

I traced this problem back to some sort of issue with the Permalink structure I had set up for /%postname%/

For some (still) unexplained reason, Wordpress would NOT update the .htaccess file on my server. When I placed one with the correct information there, that then generated a server error.

Following up with my web hosting company revealed nothing, so I had NO alternative but to move the domain to a new hosting company where I knew things worked as they are supposed to!

The video below may help you understand the problem I was facing… and how I went about troubleshooting it!

Duration: 3 min 43 secs - File size: 7.8 MB (opens in new window)

I don’t think it was a WordPress problem… rather some sort of server configuration issue which my old hosting provider couldn’t be bothered investigating or fixing… oh well!

Currently these tutorials deal with my Content Management System of choice… WordPress - and some of the other essential software you’ll meet in running your online business.

When I first posted these videos, I placed them in a sub-folder of the main domain, but I’ve since decided to place all video in the subdomain of video.onlinemarketingfundamentals.com

Now the main reason for this is that I will now have a far easier and better indication of how my videos are being used, simply by looking at the separate subdomain statistics reports.

So where possible… think of segregating different content or media onto subdomains. It might make tracking of things just a little easier… and it should not cause any issues with search engines.

Filezilla is free FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program which is fairly simple to operate because it uses a “drag and drop” approach to transfer files.

This video explains how to find, download, install and use FileZilla.

Duration: 7 min 15 secs - File size: 7.5 MB (opens in new window)

Video Summary:

• This video outlines how to locate, download and install Filezilla, a free FTP client for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X 10.5+
  
• Get familiar with the function of each of the main windows - server messages, your HD navigation, remote server navigation, and transfer messages.
  
• File / Site Manager - enter and save the FTP login details for your domain name - usually the same username and password as for your cPanel login.
  
• Once you connect to your server, you should be in the top most directory of the server in the right hand window.
  
• Double-Click on the public_html folder to go to your main (root) directory. It is from this directory that your web pages are served.
  
• To transfer files and folders from your computer to your server, simply click on the file/folder in the left hand window (your computer), hold the mouse down, and then drag the file/folder over to the right hand (server) window, and then release the mouse button to start the upload (transfer).
  
• The bottom window outlines the progress of all the files being transferred.
  
• While you are here… locate your WordPress directory (if installed in its own directory) and double click on it.
  
• Now double click on the wp-content folder - you’ll see plugins and themes. It is into these two folders that you will transfer your plugins and themes from your hard drive to activate them in WordPress.

Duration: 9min 40 secs - File size: 12.1MB (opens in new window)

Video Summary:

• Settings/General - Change your Time Zone
  
• Settings/Writing - Increase size of post box
  
• Settings/Writing - Update Services (will do shortly)
  
• Settings/Reading - Blog Pages / Syndication Feeds
  These settings should reflect your frequency of posting. If you do several posts a day, change these settings (particularly the Syndication Feeds setting) to 20 or perhaps even 30. If you post only every other day, leave them at 10.
  
• Settings/Discussion - TICK the option for “Before a Comment Appears An administrator must ALWAYS approve the comment”
  
• Settings/Privacy - Block the search engines - while you are setting up the site initially. Unblock them when you are ready to launch!
  
• Settings/Permalinks - Improve your SEO by selecting “Custom Structure” and entering /%postname%/ in the field next to it. This then shows the full post name, with your keywords, in the final URL for each page.
  
• From the Plugins option, Activate Akismet to catch spam. You WILL need to get a WordPress.com API key for this stage.
  
• Manage / Link Categories - change the name “Blogroll” to “Links”
  
• Manage / Categories - add new categories which suit the structure of your site.
  
• Manage / Links - delete all the default links and set up some of your own.
  
• LEAVE the sample post, page and comment in place until your add your own content. Then remove them.

And.. considering it is a FREE application, and is probably already available on your cPanel based web server (if Fantastico is installed) then I’ve only got to ask…

What ARE you waiting for?

If it’s the “technology” that’s got you procrastinating, then stop worrying about that right now! These videos I’m currently producing will help you over that hump, quite easily.

And here’s the first in this new tutorial series…

WordPress Installation Using cPanel/Fantastico

Oh… in case you were wondering why I had to do a video on this topic myself, when there are already so many other people who have done the same?

Well… they “miss” a few important issues that I feel you ought to know about…

Since most of them are NOT based on the current version of WordPress - 2.5 - that means there IS a place for a new series!

And I’ve based this series on a practical application as I ALSO demonstrate how to go about upgrading a normal “static” html based site that already exists, over to using WordPress to deliver content and drive traffic!

By doing that, I do one lot of work, and benefit multiple times from it! Good use of time there if you can get away with it!

So here goes… and follow along… almost in real time… while I carry out this upgrade!

Duration: 7min 43 secs - File size: 7.5MB (opens in new window)

Video Summary:

• This is for installation of WordPress 2.5 on a web server with cPanel and Fantastico
  
• The whole installation process can be done really quickly - in only a few minutes.
  
• Decide whether you want your “blog” installed in a sub-directory on your site, or at the top (root) level.
  
• FIX the admin email - make sure you do NOT use the default cPanel login email address.
  
• Once installed, EMAIL details of the installation to yourself for later reference.

Why? Well… it’s just the way it is

It’s the way the Internet is going, and if you aren’t keeping up with it… well you’re not even going to be in the game!

So… armed with my (free) version of Camtasia (the older version 3) I attempted to create the first of many video tutorials I have planned.

After about ten takes, and working out which fingers were needed to drive the start, stop and pause buttons on one hand, the mouse with the other, and then editing out lots of “oopsies”… I finally got my very first screen capture finished!

And now… try to convert it to a format you guys can use on the web!

Well… if I was having fun before, I certainly wasn’t now!

The trouble is… well… the finished file size for a seven minute movie - terribly BIG, which means slow to load for most people, extra bandwidth for my server, and just not what I really wanted! Also not wanted was the very “boring” player controls that come with that version of Camtasia.

So off to look at the alternatives available, including the ones well known to Internet Marketers - Video Web Wizard, and Cam Studio. And various AVI to SWF converter programs which looked very promising (except for the 25 MG finished file size!)

My recommendation? Forget all of the above immediately!

Big file sizes and crappy video quality! Not what you want at all!

Instead - go download the free 30 day trial of Camtasia 5 and try it out!

Once you see what this little sucker can do… you WILL pay the fee!

And if you downloaded the free version of Camtasia 3 late in 2007, count your blessings, because the upgrade fee saves you a mint!

If there’s one full priced product you will buy… it’s gonna be THIS ONE!

Don’t believe me? Check out the next post - the first in my new series - this one a Video Tutorial For Installing Wordpress.

I am totally blown away by the end result - video and sound quality wise - as well as by my oscar winning performance of course!

Surprisingly… it’s NOT that hard to do!

This Monday, April 21, Derek Gehl reckons he’s going to be able to build a profitable web site from scratch in only four days, and you can watch over his shoulder as he does it!

Now if you don’t know Derek, he’s not the guy in the pic at left…

Derek is the CEO of the Internet Marketing Center, and has some tremendous firepower behind him.

Except this time, he’s going to have no product, no list, no technical help (other than the particular piece of software he’s demonstrating) and he reckons he can build a profitable business - from scratch - to making sales in just four days!

And you can actually take part in this training demonstration for free.

OK - as I said, he’s demonstrating his new Be-Biz software, so it’ll be very interesting to see how this tool performs. Whether it can take you through all the niche research and site building and seo stuff… and actually earn an income - especially in only four days.

I have a sneaky suspicion it will…

But to be honest - I have never seen this software in action!

But what I do know is - software or not - you WILL get an education on the finer key points of how to bring a new product to market!

And that itself is worth the price of admission - oh right… yeah… I forget. It’s free to watch!

Be quick to register as the show starts in just a couple of days on Monday 21 April.

Cheers
Stephen

Simply, they shorten long URLs (or web addresses) so they’ll “fit” better into emails.

Another popular use is to “cloak” or hide affiliate links from your visitor, so only the tinyurl.com address and the ending address will be visible to your visitors.

The trouble with this is…

• It does nothing to help with your branding
  
• YOU have no idea what URL goes where unless you keep pretty good records of your own shortened URLs
  
• You have NO TRACKING mechanism to see what URLs are actually getting clicked on
  
• Generally, people KNOW it’s an affiliate link, so they are unlikely to click on them.

Especially when you have a totally FREE solution available to you to use right now!

I hinted at this and gave some examples recently in the post on what you can do with a really long domain name.

O.K. It involves a teeny bit of HTML coding, but it’s not impossible. It also involves uploading a file to your server using FTP (or even file manager within cPanel)

But that’s it!

So here’s how you do it.

1. Firstly create a folder on your web server - call it “go” or “recommends” - something shorter is better. Once that’s done, you’ll have:
   http://yourdomain.com/go/
   to use.
   
2. Next, create an HTML file for the link you want to refer (sample code below - just copy and paste the code into notepad or some other text editor). Make your changes as shown, save it, give it a name, and upload to your “go” folder.
   
3. And that’s it!

   Now you use http://yourdomain.com/go/here.html or http://yourdomain.com/go/there.html
   wherever you want to, and your visitors will be redirected through your link to the “proper” address.

So here’s your copy and paste HTML code - all YOU have to do is type your URL into the THREE spots shown.


<html><head>
<title>Transferring You... Won't Be Long...</title>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="1; URL=http://REDIRECT-URL-GOES.HERE">
</head>
<body>
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
window.location.replace('http://REDIRECT-URL-GOES.HERE');
//-->
</script>
<p>
<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>
If you are not redirected within 3 seconds, <a href="http://REDIRECT-URL-GOES.HERE">please click here</a>.
</body></html>

Remember - this MUST be done in a text editor and saved as an .html file - i.e. omf.html if you were sending people over to this site.

The techno-babble?

The javascript tries to do the redirect first. If the web browser has that turned off, then the meta-refresh takes over after one second.

If all that fails (which it shouldn’t) the manual “click here” link would be displayed.

So from now on…

Use your OWN REDIRECTS to promote your products and links!

It’s already been one month since the “official” launch of the OnLine Marketing Fundamentals web site, with NO big fanfare, NO paid promotion, NO big list and NO JV partners to tell the world…

What’s happened in that time?

What “behind the scenes” stats can I reveal to you?

What revelations have I discovered?

What strategies have I been employing to do all this?

Here goes…

Revelations

The most amazing one is the speed at which Google grabs this content! The fastest I’ve been able to clock it is under 2 minutes! Also the fact that I am “up there” in the top 10 to 20 results on Google for some of the internet marketing keywords I’m targeting for this site.

The “sploggers” have discovered my posts (thanks to all those keywords) so they are appearing all over the web! Now while some might say that’s bad, it HAS boosted my Technorati ranking (790,971) and authority rating (12) over there, so that’s probably a good thing!

People are actually leaving comments on the blog, AND signing up for my feed, which is very encouraging for such early days!

Stats

• There have been 38 posts and 17 pages placed on the site since I started…
  
• Akismet has protected my site from 61 spam comments (already)
  
• 7 people have subscribed to my Feedburner email “alert” - not too crash hot - yet! But hey, it’s a start!
  
• The number of unique visitors has almost doubled inside the month… I had 178 in March according to my awStats, and so far for April, we’re up to 321.
  
• And of these visits in April… only 39 visitors came from search engines, so my marketing on other sites is working well.
  
• Alexa ranking is currently 946,106 with a one week average of 325,398 (cool!)

Not too bad for a site that’s only officially a month old! Not too bad at all!

Strategies Used

• Writing new posts here on average one every two days.
  
• Trying to create a “series” of posts (which I can possibly expand on later in a paid product) which is a very effective use of my time!
  
• Making posts more interesting with images (I missed a few, and they look terrible!)
  
• Commenting on other relevant sites - at least one comment a day, and I try to look for those sites which have DON’T use the “no-follow” tag Must also look at how I can do that here to encourage more comments at this end.
  
• Some “WOM” marketing i.e. “Word of Mouth”, and I suppose that ALSO includes setting up my facebook profile
  
• Deep linking to different posts and pages from other sites that I have to share some page rank around… i.e. NOT only to the home page!
  
• Deliberate use of anchor text and title tags in any links that I create, internal or external (when I remember)
  
• Fixed image display in Feedburner (put align=left in the img html code, along with width and height elements) AND made sure I used the FULL URLs to the images and any links I put in a post!
  
• Got new and shorter domain name to (2omf.com) to use for email marketing.
  

As explained in Web Site Hosting 101 this can create problems for you if one of your “neighbours” on that shared computer does stupid or bad things!

So it’s probably a very good idea to get to know your neighbours by using the free service provided at myIPneighbors

Just type in your domain name, and be prepared for a surprise! You might find your host has 600, or 700 or even more sites hosted on the same server as you!

The myIPneighbors search is a great way to find out who your neighbors are or just to see how many other websites your hosting company hosts your server.

Find out if your website is packed into a crowded host with hundreds of other sites?

Or is there questionable content being hosted side by side with your site?

If so, it may be time to look for a different host

1. they take forever to type
   
2. making typos can send you to the wrong place
   
3. aren’t easy to remember
   
4. look STUPID in email marketing when the links wrap to several lines, and
   
5. when using keywords in your file names, the link can become even longerer!

For example, this domain name is onlinemarketingfundamentals.com - it’s 27 characters long, and I made one typo myself while writing it out just then!

When I add a link to it - e.g. this one
http://onlinemarketingfundamentals.com/monetisation-through-advertising-getting-started-online-part-6/
- it becomes HUGE and unwieldy.

And if I want to redirect you over to another site I have to use something like
http://onlinemarketingfundamentals.com/go/umc.html
again… another fairly lengthy URL, especially when it’s in an email.

There IS A Simple Solution

And it does NOT involve using tinyurl or any other similar services or software!

Simply buy a shorter domain name!

Well… “Der!” Stephen… Tell me something that’s “new”…

Well, stay with me here… Since practically all the short domain names are gone, you have to do some lateral thinking.

Now, I STILL want to use my main domain for branding and keyword purposes, but I want to use a SHORTER one, mainly for email marketing!

Since I regularly use the abbreviation OMF to describe this site when I am talking to people about it, I’ll go see if omf.com is available (it isn’t).

So… I’ll “add” something to it and see if that’s available instead!

Success!

I’ve just registered 2omf.com and it cost me less than $10.00

It’s just 4 characters long, and EASY to remember for us people approaching dementure…

I then went into my cPanel, selected “Parked Domains”, and “parked” this new domain name on my server on TOP of the main domain (and NO extra server expense to do this).

Now… I can refer to lengthy posts in an email by using:
http://2omf.com/monetisation-through-advertising-getting-started-online-part-6/
(OK… it’s STILL long - but not as long as it was before)

Or even send you to my main site like this:
http://2omf.com/

And because WordPress (my publishing platform) does some tricky behind the scenes “fixing” and shows my “real” domain anme in the final URL… I’m happy!

This time, from an email, I can show a redirect/tracking link like this:
http://2omf.com/go/umc.html

It saves space and time and probably even looks better and more professional too!

Now, I could have tried for gotoomf.com or goomf.com (as in “go to” or “go”) but they looked a little strange…

After all, I don’t want people asking “What is a goomf?” and then go to Google to look it up. Because maybe the acronym for “Get Out Of My Face” does nothing for my credibility…

So that’s something ELSE to look for BEFORE you go register a name! Check for strange meanings at Google!

Hmmm… 2OMF.COM

Sounds like a radio station call sign.

Maybe I should get into podcasting and re-vitalise that short radio career I had back in the ’70’s…